This is another book my mom recommended. Three women living in New York decide, shortly after 9/11, to get together on a regular basis to talk about their faith. One of the women is Muslim, one Jewish and one Christian. Their idea was to collaborate on a children's book discussing the three faiths, but they ended up writing this book instead.
They met kind of a like a book club, discussing topics of faith. They'd all write about the topics separately and then bring their writing to the meetings and discuss them. They had some rough times getting through some things.
They talk about some of the stereotyping they did, and do. I realized I don't know very much about Islam at all. A co-worker of mine, who's very bitter toward the Muslim faith, told me many times about how he'd read many things by Muslims and his conclusion was that Islam is the only faith in the world that says if you don't believe what I believe I have the right to kill you. I also read the book Infidel and the life of that author growing up in a Muslim household is very oppressive.
In this book, the Muslim woman is the one who starts the club. At the beginning of the book she is trying to find a Muslim community that is not like the ones you most often hear and read about. She doesn't wear the hajib and doesn't want anyone to say that because of that she is not Muslim. She and her husband do not believe in the oppressive things about women in that faith. This woman is Palestinian, her family's home was taken over by Israeli's. She has some feelings about that, of course, but she's very American and even talks about the need for the Muslim faith to have an American experience.
One thing I didn't know, although now I see I should have, is that the Muslims read the same Old Testament stories as we do. Her kids have kids books about Noah, Moses, Abraham and so on. I was telling my minister about that and he said that they claim to be descendants of Ishmael. I've heard that but I guess it didn't click with me what that meant.
The Muslims, according to this author, believe that as a Muslim you must believe in the Jewish stories and the Christian stories but they don't believe Jesus was the son of God, just a prophet, in a line of prophets that leads to Mohammed, also a prophet.
People reading this book might accuse the three women of picking and choosing what they will and won't believe, and making up their own religion. I guess this could be true, but in a way we all do that, at least to some extent.
The book goes between the 3 women writing about the various topics and times of the faith club. They taped their sessions so the book also includes some of the actual recorded conversations, verbatim.
I recommend this book. I plan to reread it some day.
1 comment:
I was really looking forward to reading this. It seemed so promising. However, I need to clear something up. Judaism DOES believe in the afterlife. We call it the World to Come, and it will happen when the Messiah comes. I was upset that such incorrect information was allowed to be included in this book. I did learn a lot about Islam, which was positive, but towards the end, I felt like the book took a more political stance, rather than a spiritual or religious one. I'd love to be able to contact Priscilla and talk over Judaism issues. I don't really want to recommend this book, due to its misinformation concerning Judaism.
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